


Branch System

by Guede



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alive Hale Family, Alive Laura Hale, Alternate Universe - Fairy Tale, Alternate Universe - No Hale Fire, Amorality, Courtship, Crack Treated Seriously, Fractured Fairy Tale, Frottage, Humor, Idiots in Love, Librarian Stiles, M/M, Magical Stiles Stilinski, Our Librarians Are Different, Outdoor Sex, Rimming
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-10
Updated: 2018-02-11
Packaged: 2019-03-16 03:07:31
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 14,829
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13627305
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Guede/pseuds/Guede
Summary: Once upon a time there was a librarian named Stiles, who moved to a town called Beacon Hills.  Now, this town bordered a deep, dark woods that harbored many strange and often dangerous things, and it was on the edge of this woods that Stiles found a decrepit, abandoned cottage that he promptly cleaned out, fixed up, and set about installing multiple man-traps around the perimeter—This is a fairy tale about Stiles the librarian and Peter the werewolf and how they're really bad at trying to kill each other.  It's unconventional.





	1. Introduction

Once upon a time there was a librarian named Stiles, who moved to a town called Beacon Hills. Now, this town bordered a deep, dark woods that harbored many strange and often dangerous things, and it was on the edge of this woods that Stiles found a decrepit, abandoned cottage that he promptly cleaned out, fixed up, and set about installing multiple man-traps around the perimeter—

—well, he did that because he had a lot of rare, old books of magic containing powerful spells that could cause terrible things to happen in the wrong hands. So the traps were to catch anybody who tried to get at his books. After those were up, he carefully weeded the overgrown cobblestone path that led from the house to the road, then planted several wooden signs with arrows that pointed the way to each trap. The signs were well-made with bright paint that wouldn’t fade in sleet or rain or hot baking sun, and in addition to the arrows, they had clear, easy-to-read lettering that said “Library of Cursed Evil Books Here” and “No Amateur Mages Allowed” and “Dark Magic: This Means You” and—

Yes, he is a librarian. He has books, and he looks after them. That’s what a librarian does.

Of course it sounds like he’s actually trying to lure in people specifically looking for ways to be evil and then dispatch them in violent ways. Because that’s what he _is_ doing.

You know, if you keep asking me all these questions, I’m going to think you don’t want me to tell you the story. Don’t you know anything? Do you even know what a librarian _is_?

Oh, honestly, fine. You’re supposed to be able to take certain things as a given when it comes to a genre like fairytales, but I suppose if you’re going to be _that_ dense, I’ll _deign_ to explain it to you.


	2. Chapter 2

“I love your mom’s roast beef sandwiches, Scott, I really do, I just gotta finish this one first,” Stiles says, squinting at his hexing cheat-sheet. “Otherwise sometimes if you leave these mandrake curses, you get spillage and I don’t want this one melding with the soil. That’s a perfectly good crabapple tree over there, it’s got better things to do than memorialize a dead sorcerer by slowly growing little tortured faces in its fruit.”

“Well, but they’re still warm, Mom pulled the roast out of the oven right before to make sure it’s just how you like,” Scott says, fidgeting uncomfortably with his chipper little red-and-white gingham-lined basket. He edges over towards the release rope, then twitches back when Stiles looks up sharply. Then his shoulders slump, while his chin rises with forlorn but stubborn determination. “And maybe if you eat lunch, you’ll have a second to think and realize you don’t really have to kill them?”

Stiles makes a face, then points at the big, slightly tattered book that’s still dangling above the pit by which they’re both standing. “Scott, he was kind of going after the Necronomicon. You know, the one that opens portals to dimensions filled with aliens out to drive us insane and devour all of humanity?”

“But maybe he’s got a reason, and if we just talk to him about it, we can figure out what it is and find him a nonviolent way to get it?” Scott tries.

Scott’s a werewolf, and Scott regularly runs down prey and guts it and takes it home to his mom to turn into delicious, delicious charcuterie. Scott also thinks literally everybody in the world can be converted to the side of the light, never mind that that’s not even his natural habitat, or, say, the dozens of people who’ve tried to maim or kill him in the bare month they’ve known each other. Which, _technically_ , should include Stiles, because Scott came to check out the library and Stiles’ duty in life is to kill anybody who comes to the library, because with _this_ kind of catalog, in a town with _its_ kind of reputation, nobody’s going to be up to any good.

But the thing is that when Scott went up the path and walked straight by all the traps (because “I didn’t want to touch anything till I got a library card, that’s how it works, right?”) and knocked on the door and welcomed Stiles to the neighborhood with a jug of chicken soup on a miserably rainy day (because “well, you’re new! And I didn’t think anybody else had, with what they’ve been saying about the signs and that’s kind of unfair when you’re taking the trouble to warn them”)…Stiles couldn’t do it. He should, but he can’t, and so they’re friends instead. Even if Scott fails to get what Stiles’ job is, no matter how many times Stile explains it to him.

“I don’t think so. I mean, he’s a pile of ooze right now because he tried to curse me, only the curse bounced off this,” Stiles says as gently as possible, holding up his wrist so that Scott can see one of the protective amulets dangling from his bracelets. “That doesn’t happen if he’s tossing a good luck spell or something like that.”

“Well, still, he can’t really do anything as ooze, right? So can’t you just break for lunch and think about it? Look, I’m free all afternoon, I’ll stay around and help dig up any soil that gets ruined,” Scott says.

Stiles opens his mouth to remind the other man, yet again, that that isn’t how it works, and then…okay. The pile of ooze is gross, and once it’s dead, it doesn’t go away; somebody’s got to clean it out and then reset the trap, and it’s a sunny day and the sandwiches smell _so_ good because the meat’s still _warm_ and ugh. Sometimes the librarian wants to play hooky.

“Fine, we’ll eat lunch,” he mutters, tucking his list of dissolution spells back up his sleeve. “But just that, and no promises about anything except you helping me tidy up, okay?”

“Sure!” Scott says cheerfully. “Come on, Mom sent over a bottle of elderberry cordial too, I left it in the brook to cool down.”

So Stiles and Scott retreat about ten yards off to have lunch and talk strategy about a girl in the next village Scott is courting (“trust me, no matter how into hunting she is, you should gut it and rinse out the body cavity before you give it to her”). It’s sort of a weird thing, having a friend. By virtue of their calling, librarians tend to get left out of general society, and Stiles certainly hasn’t had the chance to really just…hang out with somebody before. It’s kind of fun, actually. Don’t get him wrong or anything, he’s dedicated to his job and…and yeah, he likes it too. He likes books and reading, and okay, yeah, he likes being the guy with all the knowledge other people want even if he’d never, ever use it, because being the guy with the books means he’s had the time to read them carefully, to the last line, and cross-reference when necessary, and so he knows exactly why using any of the spells in them is a terrible idea, no matter your reasons. He likes all that.

(But it can be a little bit of a drag, is all he’s thinking. Once in a while. In the back of his head. He’d never say it, because: librarian. Not everybody can handle it, and he’s not one of those people.)

* * *

It’s a fairytale. Things in fairytales usually don’t work exactly the way they do here, that’s why a fairytale is a fairytale. So yes, you’re finally catching on now and a librarian is not just somebody who checks you in and out and then sends you notices you ignore about miniscule overdue fines. A librarian knows things, and not only that, they know where things are kept. A librarian keeps an eye on things. A _librarian_ decides who gets to walk out the door with what.

Also, this is Stiles we’re talking about. Of course he doesn’t just sit behind a desk.

* * *

In a different part of Beacon Hills but on the same day, a different werewolf named Peter wakes up and starts to go about his typical day. He brushes his teeth, eats breakfast, gives thoughtful consideration to his outfit (obviously, the same neckline that may be appropriate for threatening family isn’t going to work for mauling outsiders), and then, after a final check on his smile in the mirror, he heads out to see just what _can_ be done. Namely, how many things can go wrong, and whether anyone is blaming him for them. It’s important to be credited properly, after all.

But the odd thing, Peter almost immediately finds out, is that nothing at all seems to be going wrong today. First, all of his family are present and accounted for. Second, none of them seem to be covered in blood.

“We’ve still half a moose, Peter, why on earth would we need to hunt up anything else this week?” his sister asks him, half-absently, as she putters around in the soil. The holes she’s making with her trowel are comically small for what she normally needs to bury and it’s on the tip of Peter’s tongue to ask whether she’s gone mad when she reaches out to the side and alerts him to the pile of flower bulbs next to her. “And there’s not a whiff of rogue omegas or hunters anywhere and I’m horribly behind on my gardening, you know that. Perfect day to catch up, don’t you think?”

Peter thinks that he pays an awful lot of money to his manicurist to be grubbing his nails. That said, Talia is also his alpha, and _occasionally_ he does find himself in need of a bouquet (ruling out a well-timed apology is just as tactically silly as giving an unnecessary one), so: “Let me get your watering can, I think you left it inside. Critical to give them a good drink to start them off right, after all.”

And then he finds her nearest offspring, dispatches them with the watering can, and investigates why the other two are neither cringing behind their mother nor roaring for blood. “Well, nobody’s come up and threatened me or anything,” his niece says, wary and confused. “Mom’s right, we patrolled just like we always do, but barely ran into anybody. What, were we supposed to be fighting with somebody?”

“ _Well_ …Derek,” Peter says pointedly.

“Derek went into town and picked up the mail and came back. See, it’s right there,” Laura says, hooking a thumb over her shoulder at the doorstep. For a moment she lets Peter study the small bundle of letters, slightly smudged with dirty fingerprints but otherwise pristine. “He says nobody insulted him or jumped him or flirted with him. Look, we thought it was weird too, but we ran around the woods some more and nothing happened and now he’s actually chilling out and do you really want to ruin that? C’mon, when’s the last time you saw him look that way?”

Laura appears to be referring to the dark lump in one of their porch chairs. Upon further inspection, Peter divines that Derek is flipping through a magazine, while wearing a black leather jacket and mirrored sunglasses, even though he’s seated in the shady portion of the otherwise sun-filled porch. He doesn’t appear that interested in the magazine, although he does pause to sniff suspiciously at one of those perfume-sample pages.

“Did he walk over any of my runestones lately?” Peter asks.

“I’m not crazy, Peter! Also, I can hear you!” Derek snaps, hunching a little more behind his catalog.

“Also he’s not possessed or magicked or whatever,” his sister says, actually addressing Peter’s question. “Look, maybe—maybe it’s just a nice day, and we’re not in danger from anybody, and if you tell me you’re so bored you’re going to mess with us anyway, I am going straight to Mom. Who’s not too busy to not kick your ass, Peter. Can’t you just accept that sometimes things are just okay how they are?”

Peter smiles at her. “I am _very_ accepting, my dear niece. In fact, I go out of my way to accept that the rest of the world simply never will put in the proper due diligence. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to see this _superb_ day for myself.”

And with that, he dismisses his niece and nephew and goes off to root out the source of these latest troubles. Because he, at least, is not so complacent and realizes immediately that something is profoundly wrong with their town.

A mere hour and a half of investigating proves his instincts are entirely on point. No new teachers who are unhealthily invested in the social lives of teenagers have joined the local schools. There are no people carrying wolfsbane-laced weaponry in the bushes around his family’s house. The only werewolves around are ones on friendly terms with Peter’s pack. Peter even goes so far as to confirm with the local druid that no one’s even turned up a corpse in the past week—not even a dead _pet_.

“Don’t you have a duty to warn my sister of any impending threats?” he demands of said druid. “Since when was it wise counsel to bury your head in the sand?”

“Well, it’s not, but I also don’t really see what I’m supposed to advise her about,” Deaton says, blinking rapidly. “There isn’t anything going on, as far as I can tell.”

Peter stares at him. Deaton looks back, with that maddeningly mild expression of his, as if they don’t both know exactly how believable Peter finds the man, and how much evidence he has at his disposal to prove it (and only withholds it because he’s certainly not going to give it when Talia won’t accord it proper value). 

“I suppose I could do a general casting and see if it picks up anything,” Deaton finally suggests. “If you don’t mind waiting till my last patient—” 

“Oh, never mind,” Peter mutters, turning around and stalking off. Honestly, if he needed a casting, he’d have already done it himself. Well, he’s not here to be patronized, and no matter how oblivious the rest of his pack wants to be, _he’s_ certainly not going to stand around and let whoever it is this time plot his downfall.

Besides, it hardly takes any work at all to find them. All Peter has to do is walk along the sole road through the woods and within ten minutes he comes across the first sign—and a half-rotted shoe, which smells distinctly of alpha werewolf. Specifically, an alpha who’s trespassed on their lands before and then had the gall to offer to _not_ kill them if Talia forgave him. The only reason Peter didn’t deal with him then was because that idiotic true-alpha teenager was there watching and Talia thinks he needs “good role models.” Role models for reduced life expectancy, apparently.

Although from the smell of it, Peter’s wondering whether that might not also apply to the trespassing alpha. He doesn’t smell _death_ , exactly, but the shoe has a lingering whiff of intense fear to it, despite its advanced state of decomposition. There’s also the fact that it is lying around, rotting, and Peter certainly hasn’t seen its owner in a good two months.

Peter puts the shoe back down and sniffs around, and then a trace of well-aged leather catches his attention. He looks up and right there, sitting as pretty as you please in the crook of a nearby tree, is a first-edition copy of Von Junzt’s monograph on occult influences in low comedy forms, a foundational reference work for anyone who knows anything about magical manipulation of emotions. The hand-stitched tongue-shaped relief on the spine binding is unmistakable, and from the sheen on the leather, it’s in mint condition. He’s never actually seen a copy himself, only come across excerpts and intriguing mentions in other books, and…

…he stops and frowns at it. If that book is really what he thinks it is, then why on earth is it _here_? In a tree. By itself. Unprotected. Almost as if someone…deliberately set it out…to allow it to be taken…

He sniffs again, and then notices that the surrounding area smells pleasantly free of decay. Not even a trace of leaf mold. That, of course, can’t be right, and so Peter backs up carefully, then finds himself a stick and begins to poke around. He turns up the anchor stones for the masking spells first, then the trigger for the pit trap that’s been dug right in front of the tree holding the book.

Once the soil’s finished caving in, Peter peers carefully over the edge. Deep enough to test a werewolf’s standing jump, he notes, even without the sharp metal stakes set into the bottom.

He’s kneeling at the edge of the pit, trying to decide whether those stakes smell of manticore or seps poison, when a nearby werewolf yelps loudly. Then crashes about in the bushes as if it’s attempting to uproot all of them while dancing a jig. “Oh! Wait! Wait! I think there’s something!” calls that insufferable true-alpha twit. “Look, did you see that? I think it might’ve been that albino squirrel I told you about!”

“…nope, and since there’s some guy messing with my trap, I don’t really think there was a squirrel, either,” says a second, unfamiliar voice. “But nice try, Scotty.”

The bushes stop rustling and there’s a short pause. Humming to himself, Peter eases himself back from the edge of the pit and gets to his feet. He gives his knees a good dusting, checks that all of his claws are in good order, and then turns towards the voices.

“Stiles, he’s my _neighbor_ ,” McCall hisses urgently.

“Well, what’s your neighbor doing looking at Von Junzt? You know what that guy wrote about, he wrote about twenty years of immersion anthropological research in tiny cults that practice ritual murder,” this ‘Stiles’ hisses back. “He had _thirty footnotes_ on the proper way to tan human skin. And what, your neighbor’s a good guy in spite of being interested in that?”

“Um, I…probably…probably not but that’s not the point! You still can’t kill him,” McCall says, going from wavery chagrin to stout determination.

Stiles lets out an aggravated noise. “Scott, I like you, and not just for your mom’s cooking, but you really have to understand that if they’re evil, it’s my—”

On second thought, Peter decides, attacking them isn’t the best way to handle this. After all, McCall’s mother would absolutely come looking for her missing son, and then Talia would get dragged into it, and anyway, Peter wants to know who _else_ knows this much about Von Junzt. “I could always just leave,” he calls over. “If that’s at all helpful. Certainly wouldn’t want to put any _friend_ of Scott McCall’s through any trouble.”

Scott tries to say something, only to be interrupted by a scuffle, and then he lets out a ‘hah!’ noise, as if he’s just been elbowed hard in the gut. A second later, a lovely young man plunges out of the bushes. He immediately pulls up to eye Peter suspiciously, his hands full of amulets and what appears to be one of Melissa’s roast-beef sandwiches.

“So what, you’re not protesting the part about being evil?” Stiles, presumably, says. 

Peter smiles at him, which just makes him hike up a sleeve to shake more amulet bracelets down into his hand. “Well, that’s really a relative judgment, isn’t it? If you’re that knowledgeable about Von Junzt, surely you’ve also read his comparative survey on Satanic morality?”

“As a matter of fact, I _have_ , and I’ll have you know that it’s not remotely about pretending evil is actually good and vice versa,” Stiles snorts. “Anybody who thinks that is somebody who’s only ever read the really shitty summary in the _Devil’s Lexicon_.”

“I agree that that summary hardly does the work justice, although I have to admit to only having read the excerpts published in the _Journal of Eldritch Tomes_ ,” Peter says. “Speaking of, do you carry a subscription? They don’t seem to deliver out here anymore. I don’t know why, we hardly send any hexes around here.”

In the background, McCall comes pelting out almost on Stiles’ heels, but he’s so out of breath (apparently, true-alpha status truly _is_ all mental) that he can’t immediately join in the conversation. He sticks one hand on Stiles’ arm and does his best to give Peter a warning glower, which Peter ignores till the half-hearted aggression dies out of McCall’s face. Then the man starts looking back and forth between Stiles and Peter, his expression more and more puzzled.

“Well, that’s because they’re on hold for a quarter while somebody tries to recall the editor-in-chief from a Hell dimension,” Stiles snorts. He starts to go on about some sort of peer-review dispute involving witch-bottles, then catches himself rather abruptly. So much so, in fact, that he almost drops his sandwich, and has to carry out an awkward little one-handed juggle of that and his many amulets to save it. Then he rights himself, flushed cheeks rather deliciously highlighting the hard look in his eyes. “Anyway. Yeah, I have a subscription. And you’re interested in that kind of thing?”

“From time to time,” Peter says. Then he deliberately glances at the pit trap next to them. “And you’re interested in…maltreating valuable references?”

“Because if you’re the kind of person who—wait, what?” Stiles says. He whips his head up, then takes an outraged step forward. “Listen, smartass, I take _very_ good care of my books.”

“Oh, all right. I suppose I shouldn’t assume just from a few waterstains on a single volume,” Peter says airily, nodding towards the book in question. Then he steps out of Stiles’ way, watching as the other man, sputtering madly, hops around the pit and nimbly climbs a set of hidden pegs to retrieve the book in question. And keeps stepping out of the way, to the tune of Stiles’ loud and detailed explanation of how actually, those stains are the result of a previous owner’s ill-advised attempt to copy a Carnacki investigation in Bristol, till he’s safely on the road.

Peter guesses from the signs that Stiles either has no interest or has no ability to follow him out of the woods, and from the lack of pursuers on his way back to town, he appears to be correct. He also appears to have an explanation for the complete lack of mayhem around Beacon Hills lately.

Obviously, he’s not going to be content with just _that_.

* * *

Yes, they’re very predictable. Well, you don’t go to a fairytale for a twist ending, do you? You go to a fairytale for its resonance with universal concerns, for its timeless themes and lessons.

Yes, there’s a lesson in this: don’t be Peter Hale.

I’m not biased towards either of them. They’re both bad, but which one of them would you bet on coming up with a plan first? The werewolf who thinks he’s just found an entertaining new hobby, or the librarian with every single book of black magic in the world and no friends to talk him out of it?

I didn’t say he had no _friends_. I said his friends weren’t going to _talk him out of it._ You know what else a fairytale gives you? An appreciation for attention to detail, because everything’s in there for a good reason.

* * *

“He has family—has a whole pack, actually. His sister’s the local alpha,” Scott informs Stiles. “And they get irritated at him a lot but—”

“So why do they get irritated?” Stiles mumbles through a mouthful of string. He finishes weaving a strand through the web he’s gradually stretching across a large stump that’s been carved into a cute little book nook, then tacks the end to the wood and tugs on the middle with his lips to tighten it.

Scott winces and looks sideways in an effort to discover a way around being his intrinsically honest self. If nothing else, this Peter Hale’s inadvertently opened up a whole new dimension of Scott to Stiles. “…well, he, um…so this is what they’ve said, because I haven’t seen most of it myself, but he…gets them into…trouble…by making other people want to kill them…”

“No kidding, that _must_ be annoying,” Stiles says. He tacks up two more strings, then drops them from his mouth and hooks up a handful by the middle, pulling till the woven loops slide out towards the sides of the trunk and blend into the shaggy bark.

“But they still care about him,” Scott protests. “And he does care about them, I’m pretty sure. I don’t think they’d all fight so hard when somebody else tries to invade their territory if they didn’t.”

Stiles studies his new trap. It looks okay, but…nah, a complete set of the Pnakotic Manuscripts isn’t going to work as bait. Peter’s the kind to get snarky about the _Journal_ , he’s going to be a bit more up-to-date than that. That’s probably why he got out of the other one, he wasn’t excited enough about Von Junzt to rush in so he had the time to spot the trap. “You mean, when somebody comes after all of them because of something he did? On purpose, from the sound of it?”

“They don’t want him _dead_ ,” Scott says. “They’d be upset, Stiles. And they’re my neighbors. Talia’s not my alpha, but I respect her, and I’m just saying, he hasn’t really done anything yet.”

“Okay, okay, and anyway, he knows what I’m doing out here, right?” Stiles says. “So it’s not like he’d be stupid enough to come back and fall for it. Or even if he was, you could just go over and tell him.”

Maybe the latest restoration of the Book of the Nine Doors, Stiles thinks. Peter did sound as if he’s into literary criticism…no, still too old, needs to be something Peter would have heard of, but nothing so old that he could’ve gotten some substantive knowledge of it via cross-references. He needs to be full-on curious.

“Well, I tried that,” Scott is saying, sounding just the faintest bit frustrated. “It didn’t work.”

Stiles frowns and looks over. That’s not really something he should be okay with, even if Scott’s his friend; it hasn’t really come up before since the locals don’t go into this part of the woods much, and any outsider who’s interested in Stiles’ books is just going to take a warning-off as a sign that they’re on the right track. “You did?”

“Yeah, I went over last night. I didn’t say anything personal or anything like that, I’m still your friend,” Scott says earnestly. “I just told him that coming back would be a bad idea and I didn’t want to see him get hurt. And I told him if he just stayed away, nothing would happen to him.”

If Scott can’t lie about the type of person Peter is, he definitely can’t lie to Stiles about anything he told the man, so Stiles relaxes. “No kidding. So what’d he say?”

Scott makes a face. He clearly doesn’t want to answer, but just as clearly can’t _not_ look Stiles in the eye. “Just that you look awfully young to be handling those sorts of books, and that he…has some guidebooks on book restoration if you—”

“That _asshole_ , he didn’t even _look_ at it! How would he know!” Stiles snaps, whirling around. “Nothing was wrong with the Von Junzt! Nothing!”

“Well, Stiles, if he had looked, he’d be dead now,” Scott points out.

“Secondary! He shouldn’t talk about what he hasn’t seen himself!” Stiles says under his breath. “Look, stay there and make sure it doesn’t unravel, would you? I’m just going to run home and get something—fine, I’ll put a little canopy over them while I’m at it, just so he doesn’t stop to whine about nonexistent _waterstains_ …”

Muttering to himself, Stiles trots back to his cottage to get canopy materials. Also a better bait than the Pnakotic manuscripts—he’s just settled on the last five issues of _Paranormal Bestiaries_ when he hears a twig snapping behind him.

Stiles doesn’t freeze. Instead he takes a left instead of a right, rounds an old groundhog hole, and then spins around just as Peter leans out of the way of the ax swinging down between them.

“Why, good morning, Stiles,” Peter says, putting out one arm. He stops the ax with a finger to the handle, then gives it a mock-interested look. “I suppose it’s classic, but all the same, I was expecting something a little more current from a fellow subscriber of the _Journal_. Their cut-off goes all the way up to Crowley, after all.”

“Pun intended, har har?” Stiles mutters. He edges back till he has hold of the control rope, then yanks it hard to put the ax out of Peter’s reach. “So what brings you back to the woods? Here to complain some more about the condition of books you don’t own?”

Peter is a little startled by the ax’s sudden departure—at least, he holds still so that the wind of its passing ripples the front of his shirt, flapping up the hem to show a tanned slash of stomach. He absently smooths it back down, still looking up at the ax. “Oh, no, you’ve made it quite clear that you’re not particularly interested, and I don’t make it a habit to pursue lost causes.”

“Says the guy who came _back_ to the guy who tried to kill him yesterday,” Stiles says.

“Oh, were you trying?” Peter says, eyes suddenly dropping to Stiles. He’s smiling, with the corners of his mouth pulled back a little too far to be polite, and even though he’s only standing, there’s the odd, disquieting shift of muscle under his shirt. “I hadn’t really noticed, to be honest. It wasn’t that close a call.”

Stiles just about keeps his fingers from twitching an amulet down into his hands. Sure, he could probably cast before the other man jumped him, but hand-to-hand combat isn’t really his specialty (he’s a _librarian_ , he’s got all those books to avoid getting physical). “Yeah, well. Anyway. Maybe I wasn’t really trying either. I mean, this isn’t entrapment here, it’s just self-selection.”

“Yes, about that. You know, I don’t actually have an objection to this,” Peter says, still smiling, with a careless wave of one hand that ends in leaving his arm hanging casually wide of his body. Just like you’d hold it if, say, you were planning to charge forward and grab somebody. “There are far too many people in the world who know just enough to get themselves into trouble, and—”

He stops halfway into his step towards Stiles, head cocked as he looks curiously at the bunch of glowing talismans Stiles is holding up. Stiles raises his brows—c’mon, anybody who’s read the _Devil’s Lexicon_ knows what those are—and Peter gives him a tiny nod of acknowledgement. And then the guy finishes that step forward.

Stiles needs space to cast, unless he wants to end up squished into the same flesh-mash as Peter, so he takes a quick two-step back and left. Peter lets out an amused snort and casually moves to mirror it, then shakes his head as Stiles skitters over a tangle of small branches to keep them the same distance apart.

“You do know that werewolves don’t _eat_ people, don’t you?” Peter says, as if he isn’t flashing some fang right then.

“They also don’t randomly walk up and say hey, so, about you wanting to kill me yesterday, that’s cool,” Stiles says. “I mean, Scott aside, but from what I hear, you’re definitely _not_ like Scott.”

An annoyed look flickers over Peter’s face. It actually does a lot to ratchet down that thick air of menace the man is rocking. “Well, if we were all like Scott McCall, we’d be rescuing bunnies while other packs murder our children,” he snaps.

“Hey! He doesn’t rescue bunnies just for the hell of it, those ones were going to be a darach’s sacrifice,” Stiles protests. “What, did you _want_ one of those running around?”

“No, of course not. If anyone’s going to be controlling this territory, it’s going to be m—my pack,” Peter says. His annoyance visibly deepens. Then it wipes completely off his face all of a sudden, and instead he gives Stiles that slightly homicidal smile. “But I’m getting ahead of myself. You’re new, after all, and haven’t been properly welcomed.”

“Yeah. Yeah, well, I’m okay. I don’t feel overlooked or anything, if that’s what you’re worried about,” Stiles says. He’s starting to see where this is going.

Peter smiles even wider and leans forward. He’s still far enough away that it doesn’t give him any real advantage, but it’s pretty effective at giving the impression that he’s taking _something_. Some advantage. It’s just something about how he’s good-looking but also looks as if he’d like to rub that all over you, and might already be doing it when you’re not looking.

Anyway, Stiles resists the urge to look behind him, and Peter produces a book from somewhere. Holds it out, and then, when Stiles stares at him, wiggles it like it’s supposed to be bait. “Since you’ve an interest?” Peter says, drawing out the vowels into improper suggestions.

It is. Actual bait. And sometimes Stiles thinks he does his job more because the world doesn’t need any more stupidity than because of the whole evil thing. “Are you kidding me.”

“Well, I just thought you’d find it appropriate,” Peter says, pretending to be wounded. He pulls back and sure, ‘accidentally’ twists the book so that Stiles can see the cover and realize it’s a copy of _Sheeple: Their Origin and Culture_. “And to make amends for the other day. You’re right, I have no grounds to tell you how to handle your books.”

“Nope, you don’t, and even if you did, I know what I’m…you’re distracting me, and also, everybody knows that they lost a bunch of important diagrams between the second and third editions,” Stiles says, holding his amulets high.

Peter promptly flips open the book to the title page. “First edition.”

Stiles…Stiles hesitates. No, he hasn’t forgotten about _werewolf_ and _probably wanted to murder me even before I tried to murder him_. But….first edition! “That’s a fake.”

“It is absolutely _not_ ,” Peter says, a tiny bit of outrage creeping into his voice. He shifts the book to his other hand, then reaches over with the first one so that he can point at a blotchy stain at the corner of the inside cover. “This has been handed down in our family for generations, so closely guarded that it still even has the original _hoof-prints_.”

He’s lying. He has to be. And yet—the stain does look a lot like a sheep hoof. And it’s on record in numerous bibliographic catalogs that first editions invariably carry marks like that, due to the proofreading process. And…damn it. Stiles doesn’t want to believe it, but on the other hand, he can’t _not_ check. If that really is a first edition, then it’s one of only ten books in the entire world with first-hand accounts of how certain types of revenants can be permanently destroyed—monsters who were so terrifying that they directly led to the collapse of at least one ancient empire. His honor as a librarian is at stake (for real, somebody could reverse-engineer the monsters so it’s _completely_ independent of his raving rare-book gimme urges).

“Okay, fine,” he says. “I’ll take a look.”

“Of course,” Peter says.

They stay where they are.

Peter’s smile loses some of the overt killer and gains an equal amount in knowing amusement, while at no point being anything less than self-serving. “You’re welcome to it,” he says. “This is actually our spare copy.”

“ _Spare_ —” Then Stiles gets hold of himself, before sheer envy propels him towards the other man.

“Well, yes, we’ve actually quite the library ourselves. Perhaps when we’re better acquainted, we might be able to look into an exchange program?” Peter suggests. “It can be a little isolated out here, and I enjoy expanding my horizons.”

Stiles really can’t help himself that time, though at least he keeps the flailing to either side of him and not in a forward direction. “Seriously? With all of the wannabe rogue alphas and darachs and other evil folks coming in, you don’t have _anybody_ to be friends with? I’m not living here because I think nobody’s going to come by and spot the books I leave out, you know.”

“And _I’m_ hardly going to swap books with people who are stupid enough to fall for that, let alone make friends with them,” Peter says. He seems genuinely offended that Stiles would even make that assumption about him, to the point that he forgets how charming he’s supposed to be and rears up a little. He’s actually kind of, well, charming like that, with the indignant hitch in his voice and the way his chin hooks up (listen, Stiles is a librarian, he knows all about books and covers and judging and it doesn’t mean the pretty cover isn’t _pretty_ ). “If it wasn’t _my_ land you were doing it on, I might even admire—well, that’s a bit strong. A pit trap’s on the simple side.”

“But it works. Clearly,” Stiles says, annoyed.

Peter shrugs carelessly, back to smirking. “Simple tools for the simple-minded, as they say.”

“Hey, you—” Stiles starts angrily, and then he spots it. That little twitch at the corner of Peter’s mouth whenever he loses his temper, the lip curving briefly where something’s pushing it out from the inside. Like, say, a tongue that’d like to come out and lick said lip in hungry anticipation, but just barely isn’t. Because the guy is a werewolf and slavering is a wolf thing and enjoying other people’s discomfort is an asshole thing. And no, not all werewolves are automatically assholes, see Scott, but. Scott’s kind of weird, admittedly.

So anyway, Stiles has a new game plan. He can’t just keep on with the ranting, he’s hesitated for too long for that, so he makes as if he’s sputtered so hard he’s choked a little on it. Then he steps back, putting his hand up over his mouth. Rubs it over his lips some, coughs a last time into his fist, and then looks up over his hand as if he’s still offended but under that, kind of rethinking it.

“Well, they work,” he mutters.

“They do,” Peter acknowledges. He tilts his head, eyeing Stiles, and then visibly decides that that is a soft underbelly he’s seeing. “Till they don’t. Take this latest one of yours, for example. The counterweight is far too light, the ax is mere child’s play to spot—”

“It is not, it’s even got descenting gloss all over the rope!” Stiles protests. While angling himself just a little towards Peter’s left, book-holding hand.

Peter snorts. “That’s exactly my point, Stiles,” he says, turning and taking a step back so that he’s almost under the still-dangling ax. Then he gets down on one knee and pinches up some soil to wave pointedly under his nose. “No, you can’t smell it, but you also can’t smell anything but fresh, sprightly woodland here, and anybody who actually _lives_ in the forest would tell you that most of it isn’t scented like laundry deterg—”

The moment that Peter, deeply and smugly invested in his told-you-so moment, absently puts the book down, Stiles dives forward, snatches it up, and then runs like hell. So okay, librarians are not really physical types, but they still have a couple tricks in that department. Like running straight up a tree trunk and then scrambling through the forest canopy away from a shocked-to-raging shifted werewolf. Sure, Peter’s got claws, but Stiles has extensive training in zipping around really tall bookshelves. And a tree’s got nothing on a stack full of giant teetering coffeetable books that are going to fall out on your head if you don’t use the lightest, quickest possible grab to extract one of them.

Anyway. Stiles puts a safe three traps between him and Peter, and then jogs the rest of the way back to his house. With the book. Which he’s not stealing. Peter offered it to him, after all. And after all of that trouble, he figures at the very least, he can crack it open and check the binding style and the hoofprint stains and see if it’s the real deal.

It is, and also the inside cover has a touch-activated curse written on a slip of paper tucked into it. Stiles disarms that, and then disarms the second curse he finds on the built-in bookmark. Then he puts the book on a table, steps back, and gives it a thorough going-over with his counterspells.

“Stiles?” comes Scott’s voice from outside. “Stiles?”

“Oh…oh, hey! I’m in here,” Stiles says, picking up the book. He flips it open and then opens the door for Scott without looking up. “Sorry about that, I ran into—”

“Peter, I know, I met him on his way out,” Scott says, panting a little bit. “Stiles, listen, I think you need to be careful, he said—”

Stiles frowns and holds the book up by Scott’s head, so he can get the light coming in through the doorway. “I think he brushed poison on this,” he says, studying the slight resiny stain on the top corner of each page.

“He _what_?” Scott yelps. And then he tries to take the book away from Stiles.

“Stop that, I’m not done disarming it yet,” Stiles says, half-absently, because the resin changes color when it’s on the very edge of the page. He hooks out his elbow to block Scott, who’s still trying to get at the book, and then twists away from the other man. “Huh. Yeah, that’s definitely poison, and he even thought about if I don’t lick my fingers to get the corners up, and put something for if I got a papercut instead…oh, he _thought_ about this.”

“Well, that’s what I was saying, he thinks you’re—you’re here to _kill_ us or something like that, and I told him you’re not like that but I still think…Stiles? Stiles?” Scott keeps poking Stiles on the arm or the back, and it’s kind of annoying when Stiles is in the middle of figuring out what Peter hid in the binding. “Stiles, we need to—I’ll go talk to him. And Talia. I’ll tell him—he can’t just _kill_ you.”

Stiles shrugs. “Okay, but he didn’t.”

It takes a moment for Scott to go on, and when he does, he doesn’t sound so urgent anymore. But he still sounds worried—if anything, he sounds more worried than before. “Um, Stiles…he’s trying to kill you. That’s bad…right?”

“He really did a great job with this,” Stiles says. Then makes a face, even as he’s trying to tease out that metal spine from the binding to see if it’s magicked or poisoned or something else. “Damn. He does kind of know what he’s talking about. This is _really_ good, Scott.”

“…Stiles?” Scott says, sort of forlornly. “Stiles, shouldn’t we do something about this?”

“Yeah. Oh, yeah, definitely. Definitely gonna talk to him about this,” Stiles says, snapping the book shut. He starts to look around the room for his poison-testing kit and then something occurs to him. Wincing, he turns back to Scott. “Wait, I tried to kill him twice to this time—well, three times if you count what he ran into chasing after me. Scott, how bad do you think he’s gonna hold a grudge over that?”

For some reason, Scott is staring at him as if this makes even less sense than Stiles explaining his job. A couple times Scott tries and fails to ask him something, but it’s Scott, so he keeps trying, and on the third time, Scott puts his hand on Stiles’ arm and looks Stiles over in a concerned way, and finally gets it out. “Stiles, so…are you still trying to kill him?”

Which brings on Stiles’ second wince. “I mean, I should. He checks off all the boxes. And it’s my job. And I should do my job. I _like_ my job,” he says, and then he looks down at the book. “But I just—I don’t know, Scott, is it immoral to make an exception because I like his style? I mean, this is really cool, and I kind of—honestly, I kind of want to sit down and get him to show me and maybe exchange more books?”

“So…you can try and kill him back?” Scott says. He might not agree with Stiles, but to his credit, he’s not _ignoring_ Stiles.

Stiles fidgets with the book. “Um…no? Maybe not? I mean, I wanna talk about how we’d go about doing it but…not do it? Because then we couldn’t talk about it anymore. That’s what I mean, Scott, I don’t _know_ now.”

* * *

I know.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Little Red Riding Scott, with the little basket. Couldn't help myself. Every fairytale needs a naive waif who just floats past all of the evil killer things, and he's it to a T.
> 
> Necronomicon and Pnakotic manuscripts are from Lovecraft, Von Junzt is from Michael Chabon's short story _The God of Dark Laughter_ , and Carnacki's a reference to William Hope Hodgson's stories. The Book of the Nine Doors is from Arturo Pérez-Reverte's _The Club Dumas_.
> 
> The sheeple joke is about my [The Sheep Chronicles](http://archiveofourown.org/series/684416) series. You could pretend that this is Peter and Stiles reincarnated several hundred years later in that world.
> 
> Libraries are wonderful things, and librarians are underappreciated. Though to be totally honest, the inspiration for this story wasn't libraries, it was a documentary on bower-bird building. It all makes sense in my head, okay?


	3. Chapter 3

“Peter, what _happened_ to you?” Talia comes into the mudroom, aghast at the amount of red-tinged dirt swirling down the drain, and then she turns that face on Peter. She refuses to be put off by the hose, and steps through the spray to grab him by one arm and poke and prod till she’s satisfied he has no unhealed injuries. “Also where are the bodies, and if they aren’t bodies yet, thank you for waiting for me for _once_ and as soon as I get Alan over to watch the house we’ll—”

“There are no bodies,” Peter sighs, giving up on shaking her. Instead he lets her hold the hose while he gets the rest of the filth out of his hair, and then he gropes his way to the towels he left in the corner. “I’m fine and there’s no one to kill, Talia.”

His sister stares at him. At first she doesn’t understand, and then her eyes narrow. She crosses one arm over her chest and then props her other hand under her chin, and studies him as he mops himself off and pulls on a fresh set of clothes. Then he straightens up and turns towards the door—the doors. One of them to the house, the other one back outside. And he has no reason to go back out, except…

“Pet—Mom!” Derek says, pulling up in the middle of his resentful barging-in routine. He looks back and forth between them, then settles back into his annoyed mood. “Peter, McCall’s outside and he says he needs to talk to you.”

An odd quiver goes through Peter’s midsection. It’s not guilt, of course—they can’t have people running around their territory killing without their sanction, whatever the method—the motive. The motive. But still, it’s…decidedly uncomfortable.

“He says Stiles isn’t angry or anything, except for something about less wormwood in your distillate, but you still need to talk to him,” Derek says. “Who’s Stiles?”

Peter blinks hard. Then lets out a slow sigh, while that uncomfortable twitch in his gut vanishes as if it never were. “Hmmm?”

“Did you go after one of his projects again?” Talia asks Peter, in a tone that’s half-resigned, half-reproachful.

“What? No, of course not, nobody who’s any good at chemistry would be that,” Peter muses.

Derek and Talia look at Peter for a good full minute in silence. Then Derek scuffs his foot. When Peter looks over, Derek defensively juts his head up and towards Peter, even as he retreats towards the door. “So look, McCall’s out there, sounds like it’s your fault, you deal with him,” Derek says.

“All right,” Peter says.

After another moment, his nephew wanders off. His sister is still looking at him, with an increasingly…damn it, she’s amused. “Alan mentioned something about you looking into that northeastern corner on the border, and I was going to…” she outright smirks as he rumbles a warning at her “…fine, fine, have it your way. Just try not to traumatize everyone too much.”

“It’s hardly traumatic,” Peter scoffs, turning away. He makes up his mind and reaches for the house door—McCall obviously doesn’t know what he’s talking about, and it’s not on Peter to educate him when that time could be better spent elsewhere. On brushing up on his own pharmacology, for example; while he considers himself quite well-informed, he doesn’t have many opportunities for actual practice so he’ll admit his compounding skills are rusty. “I’m expanding my horizons, Talia, just like you’re always after me to do. After all…it really _would_ be a shame. So much knowledge there…and a lot of creativity in the practical application too, even if it’s still a bit immature…but then that means the growth potential…”

“I think you want to go that way,” Talia says gently, following Peter into the house and then redirecting him when he starts down the hallway to the common area. “Also I’ll invite Scott to dinner, and perhaps once we’ve all eaten, we can have a reasonable discussion what’s bothering him?”

Peter blinks, then shakes himself. “Oh, yes. Right. Exactly,” he says, stepping into the family library. “Fine, dinner sounds fine, I’ll see you then.”

* * *

I _know_. They’re so easy.

‘Easy’ is exactly the word I mean, and the word that best describes them. And I also know what you mean, and that’s because you’re confusing your difficulty with taking these two at face value with the difficulty in understanding how the two of them communicate with each other. The one is an actual problem, the other one is not. They’re easy, and just because you find that deeply disturbing doesn’t make it any less true.

I promised you a fairytale. I never promised you something that was _easy_ , although frankly, this one’s much easier than most. Here we’ve two complete people who know exactly what they’re getting into with each other, which just incidentally makes them complete lunatics. That’s better than two people who meet under false pretenses, or because one of them has been physically incapacitated for decades, or because they’ve had their actual desires hijacked by a spell, _or_ because one of them is running from some horrific family tragedy and is hiding in poverty and is hardly in any kind of healthy mental state to be considering a relationship. 

If I’m going to tell you a fairytale, I’m going to give you one that tells you an important truth. And the truth is—most of the time true love is at least a little bit nonsensical.

All right, usually it’s not as bizarre as these two. But really, what were you expecting?

* * *

Over the course of the next week, three would-be book thieves fall into Stiles’ traps and have their evil plans permanently thwarted, the _Journal_ finally sends out a new issue, and Stiles successfully coaches Scott through a date with his dream girlfriend. And in return, Scott drags Stiles into town.

“Well, I don’t think it’s going to work if you just stay home,” Scott explains as he tugs on Stiles’ arm. “I thought you wanted him to know you weren’t trying to kill him anymore. What if he dies before he gets to you?”

“But the point is that he won’t. You know, die,” Stiles insists. Digging in his heels. “He’s too good at seeing me coming.”

Scott gives him a last tug, then lets go and falls back a step, looking guilty about being frustrated with Stiles before he finishes looking frustrated in the first place. “Stiles, I just think if you want to start over and be _clear_ that that’s what you’re doing, it might help if he doesn’t have to go through a bunch of death traps first.” 

“Look, that’s a valid point, I’m not arguing about that, I just…” Stiles leans out from behind the tree and squints at the adorable little town square stretching beyond it. The wide-open, sunny, completely free of any nooks or crannies to dive into, square. “…I don’t like the sun…”

“You…don’t like sunlight?” Scott says uncertainly, clearly hoping Stiles will tell him he heard wrong.

The thing about Scott is, Stiles is finding it increasingly hard to lie to him. It’s just something about how Scott always seems to expect Stiles to be, well, honest and upstanding, no matter what he actually sees Stiles do. “I live in bookstacks and remainder piles, all this open space and unstuffy air and unobstructed light is just—just abnormal, okay?” Stiles mutters. “Anyway, why can’t I just send a note, or can’t you just tell him—”

“I tried, remember?” Scott says. “I even had dinner with them and everything, and all he said was that’s nice of you. And I just don’t really think that means anything good, knowing Peter.”

Stiles does remember, and when he gives Scott a second look right then, it’s not because he thinks Scott is a liar. Obviously, Scott’s not. Even more obviously (even as a friend, Stiles can’t ignore this), Scott kind of takes a one-step-at-a-time approach to everything, and especially when Scott’s actually standing in the middle of a multi-level labyrinth requiring moves in several dimensions to exit. Stiles understands this with the clarity of someone who’s just sorted out said labyrinth, also known as courtship, for the man.

“So you haven’t tried telling him since then, or anything?” Stiles asks delicately. “Since that was a week ago?”

Scott shrugs. “I can’t find him.” Then he looks over and immediately gets an earnest expression on his face. “Really, Stiles, I’ve been looking, but he’s not _anywhere_. And that’s pretty odd, usually you can’t _not_ know where Peter is. I was actually wondering if maybe he’d come trying to find you again and—”

“Okay, look, even if he had, I set up my traps to just bounce him into a holding pen,” Stiles says, a little exasperated. “I did think about that, I just can’t take them all down because there are still other people—”

“Oh, no, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean you wouldn’t,” Scott says. “Of course not, I know you.”

He’s genuinely and deeply ashamed of himself, not Stiles, for implying awful things about Stiles, even if they’re actually kind of accurate, and Stiles would forgive him just for that. Even before you get to the puppydog eyes, and Stiles might not want to date the man, but he can see exactly why same dream girlfriend would, with those. “No, I know. But anyway, so Peter’s gone missing? And he doesn’t usually do this?”

“No, usually he’s always around, causing troub—well. He’s usually doing something,” Scott says. Then he straightens up and grabs Stiles’ arm again. “Which is an even better reason why you should come to town! You can help me look for him, and that’s going to be a great way to show that you aren’t going to hurt him and then he won’t have a reason to try and kill you back. See, this way it all works out!”

Yeah, so Scott. Scott’s enthusiastic. He likes plans. He’s not a _planner_ , because frankly, his idea of a plan just…just—but he likes the idea of them, and likes them, and isn’t one of those proudly wing-it-even-when-it’s-stupid types. He just is bad at them.

He’s also a werewolf and more than strong enough to haul Stiles out of the last bit of forest, so for the sake of not having the gravel path tear up his shoes, Stiles caves and starts walking along on his own power. “Okay, but if you’ve already checked all the usual places this guy is, then where are we going to look?”

“Oh. Well, first I thought we’d go to his home and ask Talia,” Scott says, so they do that.

Talia takes one look at them and her eyes widen, but she politely waits till Scott finishes introducing Stiles. “But Peter went off to see _you_ ,” she says immediately after the usual power-play handshake (she wins, no dispute, and _ow_ ). “He’s been working all week to cook up the right gift and get things off on a better foot this time. What are you doing here?”

“Ugh, so I got sunburn and fresh-air hives for no good reason?” Stiles says. Then coughs, as Scott gives him a nudge in the ribs. “Um. That is. Thanks, right, and I’ll just go…catch up with my gift! Yes! Nice to meet you, sure we’ll see each other again, bye!”

Look, he’s a librarian, not a diplomat. And anyway, he’s got more important things on his mind right now, like Peter is heading to his cottage with a gift and the _last_ gift he got from the guy had five distinct layers of fatality to it and so far as he knows, Peter still thinks Stiles wants him dead. So he might want to change the narrative, but as a professional reader, he also knows how the story usually goes. And he’s pretty sure he needs to be somewhere else _immediately_.

* * *

I’d say something about idiots, but occasionally Stiles just explains himself.

* * *

For some reason, Peter’s nephew has decided that now, of all times, is the time he’s going to take up an interest in Peter.

“It’s not that weird to wonder what’s wrong with you,” Derek defends himself. “Peter, it’s been an entire week and you haven’t done anything evil. When Cora asked you whether it was going to rain yesterday, you actually told her it _was_ instead of letting her get stuck outside without an umbrella. So what the hell is wrong?”

“Nothing. Why would something be wrong with me? When has _anything_ ever been wrong with me, as opposed to say, simply people refusing to listen to my very reasonable points?” Peter asks, while trying to look around his regrettably obstructive nephew (and Peter means that with respect to every possible perspective that can be obstructed).

Derek gets in his way again. Peter could just force the man out of it, but…they’re standing only a foot away from one of Stiles’ traps and Peter doesn’t trust his nephew to land where he’s supposed to even if Peter is pinning him to the place, and saving Derek will just waste more time. So Peter pulls back and attempts to look convincingly normal.

“Are you trying to kill that guy Scott keeps bugging you about?” Derek asks.

Peter sighs. “If I say yes, will you go away?”

“You’ve been inside all week, and I don’t think it’s to make poison or one of those curse-things,” Derek points out. “It doesn’t smell like it and the trash doesn’t eat a hole into the ground when we take it out. Also, Cora says she saw you following Scott’s mom around the grocery and buying all the same stuff she buys, and then you took it all home and _made sandwiches._ ”

“And…this is a crime of some kind?” Peter asks. His nephew’s so intensely invested in the accusations that he can’t help being a little amused. Even people actively hunting them down doesn’t normally motivate Derek this much.

“Well, you’ve got them right now,” Derek snaps. Then even he seems to realize what he sounds like—not that he recants or anything like that, but he slouches back defensively and drops his voice, clearly trying to sound more sarcastic than panicky. “The ones you made. Like you’re going to share them with somebody, and you don’t share.”

“Not if you’re expecting to be the one who gets them, I’ll agree to that,” Peter says, losing his patience. Fine, Derek noticing a change in his behavior is actually something to commend, but throwing it in Peter’s face in such a cack-handed manner just offends Peter’s sense of family pride. Does his nephew not even _watch_ when Peter blackmails him? “They’re sandwiches, Derek, and I can do what I want with them. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I was looking for—”

Peter steps around his nephew in the opposite direction that he wants to go, so that when Derek inevitably grabs at him, he can take Derek by the arm and use the man’s own momentum to toss him towards the road. Except that when he turns around, there are two people on the road where Derek is going to land: Stiles and Scott.

Hissing, Peter just manages to yank Derek back, but that puts them both off-balance and leaves Peter with two choices: either he can curl over his painstakingly-researched sandwiches (figuring out the exact spices Melissa McCall uses on her roast beef is child’s play for a werewolf nose, but figuring out the _mix_ and order of application was fiendishly difficult), or he can drop them and have Derek trample them. Seeing as he has no desire to subject his sinuses to that many failed cayenne rubs again, he goes with the first one. Which means that Derek instead tramples _him_.

“Hey! Hey, no!” Stiles shouts. “Hey, wait, listen—”

Of course, the moment Peter feels Derek’s center of gravity shift appropriately, he heaves the other man off his back and then pushes himself up onto his hands and knees. Derek is grunting and moaning about it, with the occasional unneeded prod at Peter, but Peter ignores him in favor of checking that the packet of sandwiches is still intact and its wrapper unbreached. When he’s sure, he picks up the packet and straightens up and takes Stiles full on the chest.

Too startled to even snarl, Peter falls back to the ground. Stiles comes down with him, staring at Peter with a strange, wild-eyed, fiercely determined face, and Peter has the fleeting thought that _obviously_ this one was always going to be too interesting. “No, look, I _don’t_ want you dead now,” Stiles says very forcefully.

“Well, wonderful,” Peter replies, once he has enough breath. Or almost enough—he’d angled his arm over the sandwiches to shield them and while that’d worked, it also means that Stiles’ weight is jamming the point of his wrist into his breastbone, so that his voice cracks near the end. “I’m hardly protesting.”

Stiles starts to go on, then blinks hard. He looks at Peter. His gaze slides down a little, then zigzags back up by way of glancing off to where something is collapsing in a cacophony of screaming and splintering wood and the occasional horrified ‘meep’ from McCall. His hands, which are bunched up in Peter’s shirt and gripping Peter’s left shoulder, respectively, twitch their fingers like the man wants to leap right off.

“Just for the record, this doesn’t mean I’m convinced you’re good. I mean, you know a Von Junzt on sight,” Stiles says. Still on Peter.

“So do you,” Peter points out.

“What the hell was…what _is_ that?” Derek is sputtering nearby. “Did your friend set this up? Scott, you do realize he’s a psycho who builds giant killer mousetraps in the forest, right?”

Stiles rolls his eyes and starts to push himself off Peter, but slowly, not really prioritizing it. “Because that’s my job, I catalog books for a living, and…what, food?”

“Roast-beef sandwiches,” Peter promptly agrees. He carefully worms his arm out from between them, then plucks the packet off his stomach and holds it so a damp spot where fragrant grease is leaking out is right under Stiles’ nose. “Happy to try one first, just to prove their soundness.”

“Derek, look, Stiles is—can it wait, I think he’s really hurt,” Scott yelps.

“I think he’s dead. Pretty sure this is half his face here, and this over here…is the other half and oh. Shit, it’s—wait. He _is_ dead,” Derek says, swinging from sarcastic to alarmed to mildly celebratory. “Oh, great, so Mom doesn’t have to keep going to Cora’s parent-teacher conferences.”

“As if there aren’t at least five common herbs that are fatal to humans but not werewolves, on top of just selectively buttering one corner,” Stiles scoffs, though his tone’s taken on a tiny, dare Peter say, _warmth_. “And don’t tell me you would never have thought of that, that’s not what that paralytic in the bookmark—hey!”

Speaking of warmth, Peter’s nose…detects something. Some hint of a creamy, compellingly rich scent that…he leans forward as Stiles is speaking, narrowing down the source, and then he presses his face up to the small bit of collarbone peeking above the top of Stiles’ shirt. Two hands immediately plant themselves in his hair, twisting hard, but that smell is just so…“Coconut oil?”

Stiles’ grip loosens, and from the way he sounds, it’s out of pure embarrassment. “I—it’s sunny. I—needed to put on something if I was going out. I’m not—I don’t—sun’s not normal and that’s the top rec in a bunch of herbalries…”

“Mmmmhmmm,” Peter murmurs, sniffing his way under Stiles’ shirt, following that delicious aroma as it deepens with the tingling salt of sweat, rounded out by slightly musky skin oils. “Went out?”

“Well, I thought it’d be polite to tell you that even though you self-selected yourself into the usual target audience for my traps, I was going to—that—you’re—I mean, listen, if you’re going down _there_ ,” Stiles says, starting to yank at Peter’s hair again. Not exactly in a get-off-me way, and then he shifts backwards so that Peter can curl more onto him. “Anyway, I went to see you at your house but your sister—”

Peter grins, then darts his tongue out to catch some sweat beading up under the wing of Stiles’ clavicle. “Oh, really. Went through _all_ that trouble, with the coconut oil, even. And what were you going to do if you found me? Apologize?”

“Hey— _no_.” Stiles gives Peter a sharp push down, hard enough that the back of Peter’s head plants itself into a heap of dried leaves. A fragment blows up and dances close enough to Stiles’ nose that he has to puff it off before he can glare down at Peter. “Give me a break, you’re still the kind of guy who subscribes to the _Journal of Eldritch Tomes_ , which means you successfully hexed an associate editor, and anyway, what were _you_ planning to do with the sandwiches?”

“Invite you to lunch?” Peter says innocently. “To make up for the, ah, misinterpretation the other day?”

Stiles looks at him. Then at the sandwiches. Then back at Peter, brow furrowing as the suspicion in his expression is slowly replaced by confusion. And, if Peter’s nose is not mistaken, disappointment. “Just lunch? That’s all? I mean, with—you took the trouble to boil down crocote fat for the poison on the page edges—”

 _Oh_. Oh, indeed, and really, Peter should’ve taken this tack from the start (then again, with the level of unimaginative mediocrity he usually has to deal with, can anybody blame him for not believing his eyes?). “Sandwiches as a peace offering, and an invitation to dine back at the family home, away from all of these traps in a location more favorable to extended conversation? It is rather hard to talk when I have to keep disarming them.”

Comprehension dawns on Stiles’ face. Comprehension and grudging admiration, and he has a _very_ appealing way of chewing on his lower lip when he’s embarrassed. “Right, okay, so you were gonna get me on your home ground and then trap me.”

Peter snorts. “Well, and what were _you_ going to do? No apology, you’ve already said, so I suppose that leaves charming my sister into blaming me and making me go on your idea of a date. Which I’ll assume wasn’t going to leave any room for self-defense.”

“Scott, he tried to have you, me, and my sisters chased down by ghost cowboys and tossed into a limbo dimension,” Derek is snarling off to the side. “The last thing he deserves is a burial. Besides, I don’t see enough left to fit in a bucket. If you want to go digging in that, be my guest, but it looks like it’s going to collapse even more any minute now.”

“I know, but he’s dead and can’t hurt us now, and it’s just—well, one, do you want to have to keep looking at him? And two, Stiles usually does it so they don’t accidentally reincarnate in the plants, and things like that,” McCall answers patiently. He waits till Derek finishes sputtering in outrage about the universe and how unfair it all is, then grunts as he tries to move something. “Anyway, we could always ask Stiles how this is supposed to pull out.”

Stiles looks far more interested in being indignant with a fast-thickening overlay of curiosity with Peter. “Like what, more book spines?”

“Of course not, if you saw through that once, that’ll be the first thing you check,” Peter says. “That’s why I didn’t bother poisoning the sandwiches either. You’re going to be suspicious of any item I give you, so it’d have to come from someone else. And if you came to our house, I would assume you’d bring Scott along, and Talia always offers the leftovers and Scott never refuses and he appears to be feeding you—”

“So you were gonna poison me through Scott?” Stiles says.

“ _Drug_ ,” Peter corrects. “Drug. I don’t want you dead, I just want to pick all those malicious little inventions out of your brain.”

For a moment, Stiles looks as if he might be put off. And then he resettles himself on Peter, bracing one forearm on Peter’s chest and shifting his buttocks (which are substantially more rounded than they look in his baggy clothes) down Peter’s torso. “Well, but how were you going to get me away from Scott?”

“I wasn’t. We’re neighbors and you’d probably stay over with him if we kept you out late enough, and his house is laughably easy to break into,” Peter says. “Our house, on the other hand, is _not_ , so how were _you_ planning to do away with me?”

Stiles slouches a little bit lower so that he can rub his hand over his mouth. There’s a stronger-scented patch of coconut right under his chin, where the flesh is already temptingly soft and vulnerable, and it dips very close to Peter. And honestly, it’s not half as attractive as the meditative look in Stiles’ eyes. “Okay, first, I wasn’t planning to ‘do away’ with you, thanks for the old-timey flashback there. I just wanted to get you in a good negotiating position before we talked about calling a truce, seeing as you made such a big deal about me horning in on your territory.”

“And what position, exactly, would this have been?” Peter asks.

“Well, um. Well, you said you have your own library, so I was gonna see what that was like first,” Stiles says, chewing his lip again. “I’m guessing it’s soundproofed. Because that seems like something you’d do.”

Peter nods approvingly. “It is.”

“And so, librarian, so I can show you a couple things or two about hidden things in books. I was gonna offer, and get us really close in a corner to see, and then…” Stiles sucks his lower lip under his teeth, hard enough to mark the flesh, and then his thighs tighten across Peter’s groin as he leans closer. “…toss a little pinch in the nearest candle. Not wolfsbane, you know, way too easy and I figure you have ways to detect that.”

“Oh, I do,” Peter says, his voice dropping. No need to blare, after all. Not with Stiles less than a skin’s worth apart. “I do.”

“And just—I don’t know, knock you out for a couple. I wasn’t really thinking _hurt_ you, just—incapacitate a little, so we could talk, and.” Then Stiles stops. His fingers have crept back into Peter’s hair and are curled just to graze their nails behind Peter’s eyes, and the plumpest part of his lip is quivering over Peter’s nose. “Really, that much? _Coconut_?”

Peter can’t help himself any longer, and surges up for a good, long suck. Which, as it turns out, makes him more the recipient than the giver, since the moment their mouths connect, Stiles’ hands jitter out of his hair and clamp firmly about his throat. He shudders and Stiles’ tongue dives deeply into his mouth, raiding the place before he rolls them half-onto their sides and discovers that Stiles has used said raid as a distraction from the main point of attack. Namely, wiggling his ass down till his pert buttocks manage a flirting clutch at Peter’s half-risen erection, through all of their respective layers of clothing.

Of course, the layers rapidly reduce from there. “Coconut, wow, if I’d known that—that easy—gotten out the lip balm and the breath mints and everything,” Stiles mumbles, biting along the side of Peter’s neck while he inelegantly but efficiently defeats Peter’s pants. “I mean, so much—such a better mixer than talcum powder, I could’ve totally—just worked it into hand lotion, and gotten you with a handshake—”

He shuts up a bit when Peter drags thumbs up and down the insides of his newly-bared thighs, though if anything, his hands get _more_ ruthless, seizing Peter’s cock and grinding it up between his buttocks with a swiftness that leaves Peter panting. “Yes, _yes_ , tell me what—everything, tell me everything you planned—”

“Even could’ve asked you to _fix_ one,” Stiles groans. They roll back, Peter underneath, and he plants one hand on Peter’s chest, clawing in his nails when Peter attempts to push up against him. Peter subsides, hissing, and a wild-haired Stiles stares down at him, all bruised red mouth and bruisingly hungry eyes. His fingers shape around Peter’s cock, keeping it pressed deep between his buttocks as he rocks his weight down, the pillowy press of his ass regularly contracting to lip it. “Right? You think I’m bad at it, so I ask you to show me, and you’re so full of it, you don’t realize I have sedatives smeared all over. All over. Like the page, the vellum, the binding, the glue, I got you so busy smelling the coco-balm that you’re licking the ink off yourself without thinking. You’re totally—I’d get you, I’d totally get you—”

“…that way! That’s a trap!”

“Well, you said so was that way and that way and I don’t want to see this!” Derek half-yells, half-whines. “I thought you said he did this to kill people! Not to get it on with Peter and make us watch—”

“And _then_ ,” Stiles gasps, firmly dragging back that stray, utterly idiot particle of Peter’s mind that had lost focus on him. “Then, then I’m—I’m gonna—we’re gonna—you’re stuck and I’m gonna read you all the good ones, all the ones you think are fakes or bad copies and they’re _not_ , and you can’t touch them and I got them and got you and I’m gonna show you how _good_ I look after them, I’m good at it, I’m really good and you’re gonna—”

Peter is going to come, is what is going to happen. Come, feeling the soil plow out from under his own ass as he jerks up against Stiles, smelling the way his smears soften into the remnant coconut oil on Stiles, as his cock head rubs them into the sweat streaming down Stiles’ buttocks. And then he’s going to take Stiles by the waist and twist them over, even as he’s still shaking, because that was a fantastic climax and it didn’t do a damn thing to slow the mounting frisson in his veins. That racing fire burning him up because the _ideas_ , and how perfect they are, and again, the _ideas_ and he is absolutely civilized, thank you, but today he’s going to rut in the dirt like a beast because he really can’t think of any more proper way to express himself.

Stiles squeals a little. Mostly because Peter’s dragging him through a thick splotch of dead leaves, and Peter supposes they can be ticklish. However, they’re not tickling _him_ , and once he’s nosed his way up to Stiles’ ass and is laving it over, Stiles settles down. More or less. Discounting the moaning and frantic humping up into Peter’s mouth, especially when Peter rounds him over a buttock curve and then lets its weight skim his lips over it, scraping off still-warm come into his mouth for a long, savoring swallow.

“Oh, man, okay, oh, oh, come on, come _on_ , stop teasing, I’d let you get out at some point,” Stiles moans, leaves crunching as he fists his way through them. “Okay, okay, so you—you’d probably fake like we’re good and then sneak after me anyway, right—spend a whole week stalking around and setting off the traps and making me redo them and creeping and _yes wait no higher yes yes_ —”

As a matter of fact, that is exactly what Peter would do, and it’s so wonderful that Stiles would know it so instinctively that Peter can’t help a delighted growl. With his face half-buried between Stiles’ buttocks, the vibrations transfer directly from his tongue into Stiles and send Stiles into a rough, twitching spasm.

“…no, that way! That way, trust me, I go to his place all the time, it’s that way. Derek, I’m just trying to keep you from getting hurt.”

“Honestly, at this point, I might want to fall into one just because it’d make me forget, Scott.”

His nephew has an absolute gift for ruining Peter’s enjoyment of anything. Peter raises his head, annoyed, and then frowns as he doesn’t see anyone except for a mangled corpse sticking out from between two hinged halves of a medieval siege machine. He listens more carefully and only then realizes that Derek and McCall have actually retreated, even if they’re still in earshot.

“Okay. Okay.” Stiles moves under Peter’s chin and when Peter reflexively lifts his head, the other man twists a leg over it and then flops back, propped up on his elbows as he stares down at Peter. He looks—and smells—a little unsure.

On the other hand, his body posture doesn’t indicate an imminent departure. Peter cautiously edges up between the man’s sprawled knees, and when Stiles doesn’t move, ventures to lean his head against one leg. Then put his hand lightly against the other thigh—it flexes sharply and Peter doesn’t push it any higher (just because he’s careful doesn’t mean there’s a point in ceding ground before he has to).

“Truce?” Peter says.

“Um. Well, I mean…did you not want to?” Stiles says. He fidgets with his hair, then slicks his hand back through it. Absently shakes the sweat from his fingers and then gives Peter a sharp look. “Look, round two is—”

“Perhaps better after something to eat?” Peter suggests, glancing over at the half-forgotten packet.

A faint hint of amusement crosses Stiles’ face, but on the whole, he still looks nervous. “Get up my strength and all that?” Then he looks over in the same direction, but at the trap, not the sandwiches. “Well, it—it’s a nice thought, but I’m kind of…I’m kind of supposed to be working, actually. And ugh, he had to go and gum up the ratchet, you see that? Shit. Shit, I might not even be able to clean that out…go all the way back for a spare…”

“Oh, I think you’d still be able to use it, you’d just lose the bidirectionality of the trigger,” Peter says, studying the mechanism himself.

Stiles is silent for several seconds, and when Peter looks back, he finds the other man regarding him with a complex mixture of interest, wariness, and the odd spark of hope. “So…the part where I’m setting up traps on your land. To attract and get rid of people who have hobbies like black magic and massacres and torture.”

“Yes, what about it?” Peter says. He lifts himself up on one arm, then resettles himself so that he’s half-lying on Stiles’ belly. The other man doesn’t seem to have any objections to it, and in fact, he half-glimpses one of Stiles’ hands making an aborted movement towards him, as if to touch his hair. “That’s one of my preferred pastimes too, as a matter of fact. Though you’re friends with Scott—I’m sure you’ve heard a distorted version.”

“Well, or it sounded like maybe you got too into the lure part, and could work on the dispatch part,” Stiles says. His belly muscles relax under Peter’s cheek, then tighten up again. “Which actually means I’m pretty busy, and while I really mean it when I say I don’t want to kill you now, I also don’t really have a ton of free time because I’ve got to reset and clean out traps and it’s a lot of work and—”

“—an area where you’ve just said I could use some practice.” Peter tilts his head so that his mouth almost brushes Stiles’ skin, then twists it back to just pin the disappointment down in Stiles’ eyes. He grins as the other man flushes and then makes a half-hearted grab at his hair, which soon turns into playing with the curls as he starts nuzzling up Stiles’ breast. “And I _am_ genuinely interested in a knowledge-exchange, and admit I may have been too hasty to judge a book by its cover…though I do think I’ve a few tips to offer in lures and bait, now that you mention it…”

When Stiles hauls him up, there isn’t a trace of hesitation in it. On the contrary, Stiles is grinning almost as widely as Peter. “You just want a library card,” he says. “I know that look, you totally just want an in and—”

“Please, Stiles, nothing less than patron status will do for what I have planned,” Peter murmurs, kissing him.

(And it was part of the plan. Oh, fine, perhaps not all of the details worked out as intended, but generally—a complete success. And people think Peter’s provocations don’t have a _point_.

He does adore a good scheme, he really does. And happily, so does Stiles.)

* * *

“Well, yes, of course this has been about true love all along,” Lydia says, rolling her eyes at her audience. “What did you think it was about? What else is that psychotically, unrepentantly absurd—”

“Hey! Lydia, honestly, do you always have to traumatize the kids?” Stiles scolds, swooping down on the basket. He pulls it away from her, then hugs it protectively to his chest as he peers inside. “Seriously, they’re way too young for that kind of thing, you’re gonna mess them up.”

Lydia looks at him. Then, not for the first time, wonders why she bothers to stop by this branch. A distributor with her contacts has her pick of the best from every library in the country. In fact, she has a waiting list of people who would love to place with her, and yet…the moment Stiles gives her a call, she heads straight over to see his latest issues.

“I mean, I know their provenance and all that, but you need to be careful, or else you’re just going to end up with one of those crappy throwaway fusions that people forget about after one summer,” Stiles goes on, pulling out a paperback from the basket. He gives it a light dusting over with his fingertips, then gently replaces it. “These babies, they’re built to last. Respect the franchise, Lydia, and it’ll reward you with generations of merchandise deals.”

“Do you even _hear_ what comes out of your mouth,” Lydia says. “And you honestly think I’m responsible for how they turn out? And let’s not get started on—”

She looks pointedly across the room, cutting Stiles off mid-nonsensical rationalizing rant. Oh, he tries to withstand her looks, but he knows he can’t afford to miss anything when it involves his partner in the trade. And she’s proven right when Peter wanders into the room, airily casual as he comes up to the table.

“Hmmm? Fresh orders from our favorite dealer?” he says, smiling at Lydia. Then, when she doesn’t reciprocate from, he heaves a little mock-disappointed sigh and looks down at the basket. Peter immediately brightens up as he lovingly pets the paperbacks; the pride is genuine, Lydia will give him that, but there’s really no need for the way he fingers the spines as if they’re meant to be invitations to debauchery. “I do hate to see a batch go…but then, I suppose that’s the way of things. And it will free up a few shelves.”

“Stop _doing_ that,” Stiles mutters, grabbing Peter’s wrist and pulling his hand out of the basket. Then he gives Peter a couple shoves, walking them away from the table. “I’m trying to convince Lydia these aren’t going to end up like the last ones with the obscene materials drama over in—”

“Well, if she doesn’t trust them, we can just try for a new batch,” Peter purrs, letting them close in on each other so that Stiles ends up pressing him against a tall bookcase. “I did just get in the latest copy of the _Journal_ and it has a fascinating article about oral—”

Stiles lets out a little frustrated noise. And does not, Lydia notes, step away from the other man. Actually, he drops his head to Peter’s shoulder while Peter puts his hands unnecessarily low on Stiles’ waist. “Look, it’s great that you didn’t get weirded out about the side-effects of hooking up with a librarian, and I appreciate the coparenting a ton, but there’s a point where this whole, I’m a big, strong, virile male werewolf and you can tell because we’re up to our ears in paperbacks and Lydia can’t cart them off fast enough thing is—Peter, _seriously_.”

“Yes, very,” Peter says, dragging them around the corner.

Lydia counts to ten, and when they don’t reappear, she picks up the basket and puts it over one arm. “You’re not going to do for the school placement I came here to fill, but I’ve got a couple other customers that I think you’ll do well with. Just remember what I told you—a good story always has a point to make, and the point here is that in no way, shape, or form do you want to end up back here with these two morons. Keep that in mind and I think you’ll go very far, all of you.” 

* * *

“I think it’s a good idea,” Scott says. “A lot less people have gotten killed, and literacy’s up too since Stiles and Peter don’t have to spend so much time with the traps and can actually run a library. You know you can come by and check things out now, right? And they’re not always…um…”

Derek stares at him.

Scott sighs. “Well, anyway, I was visiting and they had the latest one in, in case you’re still reading.”

He holds out a paperback book, a hopeful smile on his face. As the seconds drag by and Derek does nothing, the smile dims slightly, but Scott has a feeling and so he keeps his hand up. And sure enough, Derek finally sticks out his hand and takes the book. “I just want to know if the beta comes back or not,” he mutters.

“Yeah, I know, I was really upset with that last cliffhanger,” Scott says, nodding along. “Even Allison was mad—she’s more about the banshee, but she thinks they still should get together. Hey, do you want to come over? We, um, we started a kind of book club after the last one to help each other out, and we’re meeting tonight.”

“…I haven’t read this one yet,” Derek says.

“Well, okay, it’s at seven at my place,” Scott says. “Just come on in, if you do want to!”

Derek shrugs him off, but as Scott turns to go, he just catches the other man grumbling a ‘thank-you’ for bringing the book. It is a really good series, Scott thinks—it just grabs you. And if there wasn’t the new library, he never would’ve come across it.

Yep, it’s a much better town with the library, no doubt about it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So coconut oil is actually of highly-disputed effectiveness when it comes to use as a sunscreen, so don't trust Stiles on that one. He really doesn't get out much, it's not an area he researches that often and he was in a hurry, okay?
> 
> A crocote is one of the more obscure fanciful animals from medieval bestiaries, and was supposedly the offspring of a hyena and a lioness.
> 
> Yeah, so Stiles doesn't physically birth books or anything. It's just that when a librarian and a werewolf are in a loving, sex-filled relationship, a lot of little paperbacks start to pop up around the place. Because sympathetic magic. He's happy and productive, the books are happy and, well, productive.
> 
> The bower-bird documentary: Male bower birds build little grass "bowers" and then spend large chunks of their lives lovingly and obsessively decorating it with various objects from flowers to beetles to pebbles to bottle-caps. Every bird has a different preference, though usually it involves bright colors and bling. So if Stiles was a bower bird and had a bower that was attractive to Peter, it would...involve intricate man-traps and books of black magic, because I don't recall Peter really complaining to Stiles about Stiles' contributions to killing him in season 1 when Peter clearly and repeatedly took offense to Derek and Lydia and Scott's roles in that. Anyway, these two are weird.


End file.
